Jan. 10 Newsletter: Two crucial hours at the water plant
Weather: A snowstorm moves through starting late tonight, but it won't be as bad as the last one.
On this date in 1965, a $75,000 refurbishment program is announced for the Virginia Boat Club on Mayo Island. The club, founded in 1876, ended up folding in 1972 after damage from Hurricane Agnes.
‘I’ve never seen it not switch over’: Details emerge of the crucial time period that led to water crisis
Reporters Graham Moomaw and Sarah Vogelsong assembled a timeline of what happened on Monday morning that led to this week's water crisis.
- At 5:50 a.m., the power went out. A second power supply is on a different portion of Dominion's grid, but a switch that automatically activates that supply didn't work.
- An electrician was called to come manually make the switch, restoring power at 7:30 a.m.
- The plant had a battery backup to help facilitate the transition, but it only lasted 45 minutes, which wasn't long enough.
“And so the battery backup going out is what led to the computer system, the SCADA system, crashing," Mayor Danny Avula said. "And then when we rebooted the SCADA system, we weren't able to connect it to servers.”
The failure of the SCADA system then prevented water valves in the plant from opening, leading to massive flooding that rapidly submerged other critical equipment.
Meanwhile, the boil water advisory could be lifted as soon as this evening, depending on how quickly the Virginia Department of Health can finish testing on the restored supply.
The requirement to lift the advisory is two tests that come back negative for contamination, spaced 16 hours apart. The first test began at 3 p.m. yesterday.
As of yesterday evening, five of the plant's eight pumps were back online, in addition to two bypass pumps, creating enough supply to restore water to the city.
Read more on that process here.
Fox Elementary celebrates rebuilding milestone on Friday
The cupola, a small dome atop Fox Elementary School, will be placed at a ceremony in The Fan this morning.
Superintendent Jason Kamras and RPS Chief Operations Officer Dana Fox and other elected officials will offer remarks at 11 a.m., followed by the topping off of the cupola outside the school at 11:15 a.m.
The public is invited to watch from the Hanover Street sidewalk.
In other news
- Boiling Point: Water crisis tests City’s response, resilience (Richmond Free Press)
- Richmond DPU operators were unaware of process that could stop flooding at water plant, briefed official says (CBS 6)
- Locally-based spice and mayo maker Sauer Brands to be sold for second time in 5 years (BizSense)
The editor's desk
What a week. The hope is that the boil water advisory will lift in the next 24 hours, restoring water to the Richmond region. There's still plenty of work to be done in the coming days, though. We'll follow the rebuilding of the water plant, the effects of the outage on our buildings and neighbors, and the investigation into how this happened.
We're grateful you put your trust in us this week, and will work to continue to earn it in the days and months ahead.
Michael Phillips, founding editor
mphillips@richmonder.org
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